NACDS Pharmacy Conference sounds call to action

Blending high-profile speeches with detailed educational sessions and trade-booth deal making, more than 2,600 chain pharmacy executives, buyers, pharmaceutical vendors, technology experts, educators and guests tackled the changing role of the pharmacist over a five-day gathering in San Diego in late August and early September.

Chain pharmacy's best and brightest concluded the 2004 National Association of Chain Drug Stores Pharmacy & Technology Conference Sept. 1 with a renewed call to action as the industry grapples with Medicare reform, drug importation and other challenges.

Conference chairman Ralph Petri, NACDS chairman Mary Sammons, NACDS president and chief executive officer Craig Fuller and other leaders issued that call. We live in a country that did not recognize pharmacists as health care providers until very recently," said Petri, executive vice president of pharmacy and logistics for Kerr Drug. "If we are to succeed, we, as a profession, must do things differently."

Both Petri and Sammons laid a challenge before the industry's top pharmacists: Lead retail pharmacy beyond its perilous dependence on dwindling prescription profits, and create a new practice model that, in Sammons' words, will allow pharmacists "to live up to the full potential of their profession."

Much of the focus was on the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and its provisions beginning in 2006 for extending pharmacy benefits to seniors. The pharmacy profession's ongoing efforts to shape that legislation--and to cope with the interim Medicare drug discount card program that was launched in June--was the subject of several conference seminars and a lot of speech making.

"The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 gave us a path ... for how we were going to go about providing prescription medication coverage for the uninsured Medicare population," Fuller noted in a general address to conference goers. "It wasn't a perfect solution, to be sure. It was a solution, however, in a debate that recognized some of the most important elements of creating that healthier future for retail pharmacy. It was a debate that said patients should have a choice as to whether they fill these prescriptions at their community pharmacy or though the mail of through some combination of both.

"It said you can't I pose more risk on community pharmacy," Fuller added. "And in that debate, we created ... a greater understanding among policy-makers at the federal level and at the state level for just how important community pharmacy is in the overall delivery of health care."

With a packed agenda of educations sessions and panel discussions, the conference also threw a spotlight on such red-hot issues as drug importation, electronic prescribing, patient safety, medication therapy management and biotechnology. The event also included an update on the prescription drug market by Doug Long, vice president of industry relations for IMS Health.

Another highlight: a live video address by Mark McClellan, administrator Of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on the important role Pharmacists will play in Medicare drug benefits.

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